[log] IT'S A MONSTER PARTY [closed]

[devoutish]

Characters: Alfie Solomons, Ecks, Fiona, Francel de Haillenarte, Haurchefant Greystone, John Watson, Tifa Lockhart, Royce Melborn
Location around U4/V4, and then in various houses
Date: evening of 138 through morning of 139
Summary: various merry traveling bands are set upon and scattered by a RUDE AS FUCK anomaly
Warnings: n/a; will edit if anything comes up

Catch-all for EVERYTHING - running from the anomaly, settling in various houses, etc. Top-level and tag as you see fit.

Comments

[ecks]

I had not thought about that.

[Murder is generally a bad thing because she would not want to be killed and she figured out maybe half a year ago that other people also have feelings and also don't want to die. She had not expanded the scope of that line of reasoning to include the feelings of those people's friends, though.]

I did not plan to do this.

[But she didn't plan not to do it, either.]

[jumpthegun]

Then why did you do it? [He's trying to get her to articulate more than he's looking for an actual answer. He has a good idea of the reasoning. Whether she's aware it's her emotion clouding things is more important to how he'll deal with her after this point.]

[ecks]

[Silence as she mulls it over. It is troubling that she did not think this through beforehand. What she comes up with is maybe less reasoning and more rationalization.]

He should not have killed Doctor House. He was not sorry. He said he would not do it again but he did not have a reason to not do it again if he did it once. I wanted him to stop killing Doctor House and I did not think he would stop killing Doctor House.

[jumpthegun]

No. He shouldn't have killed Dr. House. You shouldn't have killed him. It wasn't necessary, Ecks. You were angry. You were upset he killed your friend and you wanted to kill him back to make up for it, right? Do you feel better about things now? Do you honestly think Dr. House is any safer now than he was fifteen minutes ago?

[ecks]

I have rules. I do not kill people for no reason now. I have rules.

[No, she doesn't feel better. No, she doesn't think Doctor House is safe now.]

I need to find Doctor House.

[jumpthegun]

Ecks, you're gonna be coming with me for a while. We can look for Dr. House, but we'll be going to meet with Ms. Carter, first. If you have rules that let you kill a man in cold blood when it isn't necessary and it isn't even a good idea, then you're going to need to deal with the consequences of that.

[Consequences meaning he's playing minder now.]

[ecks]

[What.]

I am supposed to explore. I came back here to explore and Doctor House told me to explore. We must find the center of the spiral and I have to find the other side before he comes back.

[This after she was just saying she needs to abandon the project to find House and babysit him. She doesn't know what she wants right now, but it's got to be one of those two projects.]

I could clarify my rules so they do not allow this.

[jumpthegun]

Ecks, you just murdered someone. Why d'you think I was talking about holding him with us? It's because he did something he shouldn't have done and another person ended up dead. We could have stopped him killing Dr. House so many other ways. And now he might revive somewhere, you don't know where, and run off and kill Dr. House again because we've lost track of him.

[ecks]

So you are holding me with you now instead?

[Somehow it didn't occur to her until right this moment that there would be a parallel there. Now that she sees it, it's worrying, very worrying.]

Are you going to tie me up?

[jumpthegun]

No. I'm not going to tie you up, Ecks. Not unless you aren't going to listen to me. We'll get back here to explore for Dr. House, but I promised Ms. Carter I'd meet up with her. And I can't trust you to manage on your own anymore.

[ecks]

[She draws away toward the door to the other rooms, giving a little shake of her head. This is very very worrying.]

I make my own choices. I have to make my own choices or I am not a person.

[jumpthegun]

[John stays where he is. He's already told her he's not going to tie her up if he doesn't have to.]

Ecks, making your own choices isn't what makes you a person. You think for yourself, you have feelings, and you're aware that your actions have consequences. That's why you have your rules, isn't it? Those are the things that make you a person. You're you. There's nothing that's going to take away that you're a person anymore.

You need to face the consequences of what you've done. You lied to me about why you came here. You killed a man who didn't need to be killed. What would you do if you were in my position and I'd lied to you, killed someone you were responsible for?

[ecks]

Nothing?

[Consequences. He keeps saying that word, and if it weren't for having seen how the people here react to murder, it would be a foreign concept to her. She's never in her life before now been scolded for killing someone; far from it. It's really only been the rules she's built around her internal sense of fairness that have turned her off it.

She looks between Watson and the body on the floor -- Doctor Watson has ruined his sweater, she thinks. He also keeps saying things that are slowly sinking in and making this situation seem much worse than it did a few minutes ago. Case in point:]

I would kill you to stop you from killing them. That is what the rules say. That is one of the acceptable reasons for murder.

[jumpthegun]

Nothing. [As much as he needs her to understand that what she did was wrong, John's still aware that he's dealing with a young woman who is struggling to identify who she is and what she stands for.] It doesn't matter what this place does to us, what it might take from us. You are a person. You will always be a person, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're just trying to be cruel, to hurt you because they're ignorant or scared of what they don't understand.

[That's attended to, as far as he's concerned.]

But I've already killed them in our hypothetical scenario. What do you do now when I say that I'm not going to kill anyone again? Are you going to believe me? I already lied to you before. And now someone's dead because you trusted me.

[ecks]

[Always be a person. She isn't entirely sure she believes him -- how can he know when there are no other things like her? -- but for now it will have to be enough.]

I do not have a rule for that. I do not...I have rules for things I do. I do not have rules for things other people do.

[Except murdering someone in defense of herself or another is a response to a thing another person does -- a rule for reacting. It's not that she can't see the need for such rules, but that she's quite suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of it. There are a great many things not in her book, and she knows it.]

Duster said he would not kill Doctor House again. I killed Duster anyway.

[jumpthegun]

Ecks, sometimes there isn't a rule for everything. Life doesn't follow neat rules. You can get some things down. Those are your moral principles, they're the things you won't compromise on. But there's a hell of a lot beyond that. You can't have rules for every situation because every situation is different. Some of them, like this one, are messy.

But one of my rules is that if you kill someone in cold blood when they're not an immediate threat and can't defend themselves? That's wrong. I know you killed him because you were angry what he did to House, Ecks.

You can admit that. You weren't acting rationally. What you did was irrational and wrong. And not everything irrational is wrong, but in this case? You messed up, and I messed up. We have to deal with that moving forward and what it means for you and for me, for Duster and all of his friends and allies.

[ecks]

[Ecks stares at Watson in what he might not recognize as horror in the darkness of the room and the blankness of her expression. Not a rule for everything? She knows that her rules do not provide for every situation yet, when she is still working on them, but he is asking her to accept that they will never provide for every situation.

That cannot be true. If that is true, she will never understand and she will never be able to do what is right. His own rule, which might normally be welcomed as input into her system, is hardly heard.]

Irrational. I understand.

[She can accept that much, at least, but her responsiveness is rapidly shutting down.]

I will go rest now. I messed up, I will go rest now.

[jumpthegun]

[John notes how she pauses, at least. He thinks it's a lot and he's going to let that settle in. If she's resistant to following him in the morning, then... well, then they'll cross that bridge when they get there.]

I'll get this cleaned up. Try to actually sleep this time, Ecks.

[At least one of them should do it properly tonight.]

[ecks]

[It is a lot. It is too much. She nods again and slips out the door to the other room, quite suddenly Done with this conversation. She did wrong, but there's no rule to write about it that will explain it? It's impossible. There has to be a rule.

She'll try to sleep because she has been told to do so, but neither of them will get much rest tonight.]